


The More They Stay

by bell (bellaboo), bellaboo, usomitai (bellaboo)



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-16
Updated: 2008-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-02 03:49:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bellaboo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/usomitai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternative version of the third season, only with House/Wilson and no Tritter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Circa the end of the Tritter-arc, I was becoming increasingly fed up with the third season. I thought it a waste of a brilliant beginning. With that in mind, I came up with my own version of what happened after 2.24 “No Reason.” I finished the first draft around March 2007. Shortly afterwards, I was stunned to see several of my plot points appearing in the series. For a while I debated changing the story and in the end decided not to. The fic came out as it did and so be it.
> 
> I both hate and love this fic. I was never entirely satisfied with how it came out and I still don’t know why.
> 
> Beta by leia_scully, leiadiana, and wingblossom.

** _i want happiness_ **

“Things are going to change, my friend,” House grinned, raising his glass.

“You mean you’ll trade your addiction for alcoholism?” Wilson quipped, but still clinked his glass against House’s. House frowned at him; it was the quickest way to reproach him for raining on his parade.

“Do you _mind_?” They were celebrating, in one of House’s favorite but rarely visited bars, his renewed ability to walk on two legs. So far his bipedalism was limited to a mere two steps— left foot, right foot—before he collapsed in a heap and cried out bloody murder. But progress was progress, and House was just as proud of the movement as the fact that after the crash the only pain killer he wanted was paracetamol. It had been for the ache in his knee after he fell on it. Not for his thigh. “The one time in my life I try to be positive, you decide to take up the shackles of pessimism.”

Wilson shrugged. “Just being realistic. It’ll make the inevitable fall hurt less.”

“I know you’re out of practice, but could you, _maybe_, try being happy for me?”

“On the contrary, House. I’m thrilled.” Wilson raised his glass again. “To House, misanthropic doctor extraordinaire, and to a better life for him.” He downed a good half of his wine. “I just want… I want this stroke of luck to go right. In the right direction.”

“You think the minute I get rid of the cane, I’ll walk off a cliff?”

“It’s more than just physical, House. _Everything_ is going to change. And not necessarily in ways that you want.”

“Stop fretting your eyebrows away! Enjoy the moment!”

Wilson raised one of said eyebrows. “If you insist.”

The next victory, of walking from one end to the room to the other without falling, House celebrated alone.

 

**Part I**

_ **but let me just stress we’re both at our best in a tight spot** _

Oddly enough, the easiest part was getting him to the emergency room. Even through her shock she knew what to do: staunch the blood flow, call for a gurney, and attend to whatever complications arose. But once House was out of their hands, once there was nothing left to do but the waiting, they were at a loss.

They hung around the corridor, none of them wanting to look at each other, none of them knowing what to say. Chase, his hands in his pockets, stared intensely at the ground as if whatever it was he was he wanted could be found there. Foreman’s arms were crossed and his eyes darted all around, trying to keep track of everything.

Cameron pulled off her bloody latex gloves. The wet sound they made as she peeled them off her fingers was a familiar one, but it still made her uncomfortable.

“Who was that guy?” Chase was the first to speak.

“He had to be some ex-patient of House’s,” Foreman said.

“Did _you_ recognize him? I sure as hell didn’t—“

“Does it matter?” Cameron interrupted. She was tried to keep the blood—there was so much of it— on the glove off her hands. Wasn’t there anywhere she could throw them away?

Chase gaped at her. “Does it _matter_? I don’t know, maybe, he only just _shot_ House—“

“He’s gone.” Cameron found a trash can and threw out her gloves with relief. “And he won’t be back.”

“She has a point,” Foreman said. “Even if he wanted to finish killing off House—“ Cameron and Chase both winced—“he couldn’t get in. Security’s been hiked up, there’s no way he’s getting in now.”

“What if he comes back later?” Chase asked defiantly. “What if he shows up months from now, here at the hospital or at House’s place? What then, what’s to keep him from doing it right the next time?”

“For now, we have other priorities.” Cameron had wanted to say that the police would take care of the shooter, but she knew how Foreman felt about law enforcers and that bringing them up would only serve put him on Chase’s side. “There’s still that patient House admitted to the Diagnostics Department. We can’t forget about him.”

“The guy with a swollen tongue?” Foreman was incredulous. “The one House was abusing for his own amusement? That’s not a real case.”

“Maybe, but he’s been admitted to the department and we can’t just throw him aside. If it’s not a real problem, like you say, then we’ll be done with him before we know it.”

“And if it _is_ a problem?” Chase asked. “What then?”

“Then it’s a real case and we better get on it quick, because we don’t have House to solve it for us.”

Neither Foreman nor Chase could disagree with that.

** _in times of crisis_ **

Things, as Cuddy knew them, were coming apart at the seams. She was trying to sew it all back together when Wilson banged open her office door without so much as a knock, pale like he’d seen a ghost. But she knew it was no ghost he had seen; rather, he was fearful that he was about to see one.

She felt the same way.

“They’re saying House was shot. Is it--?” His hands kept twisting one over the other as though they were devouring each other.

“It’s true,” she said as calmly as she could. “One shot to his neck and another to his abdomen.” She marveled at how she could rattle off this information as if it had no relation to an infuriating but beloved colleague and friend. It had to be because of her years facing the worst as a doctor. “He went into surgery half an hour ago.”

Wilson had been turning paler and paler up until that last part. He reddened suddenly. “Half—why didn’t anybody tell me?”

“Bit busy,” she explained, not without a trace of sarcasm. “It’s been crazy ever since and I’ve been running all over the place. There’s been the police wanting witness reports and  
—” she glanced nervously at the clock. “The press should come swarming in any moment now. They’ve been calling nonstop.”

Wilson took a deep, shuddering breath, and then straightened his shoulders. “What can I do? Right now, I mean. Call his parents, juggle reporters—”

Cuddy had pulled out a mirror she kept in her desk and was making sure that nothing had to be reapplied. Her lipstick was slightly faded and she should brush her hair before the media arrived. What a crazy thing to have to do while, in another wing, someone else saved House’s life. “His parents have been contacted and the fewer people who talk to the reporters, the better.”

“So I’m useless?” Wilson asked, tone bitter and self-deprecating.

“We _will_ need you,” Cuddy said, applying the lipstick and pressing her lips against each other, “When House comes to. You can help him on a more personal level.” She started to root through her drawers; where had her hairbrush gone?

Already thinking ahead of what she had to do next, she had half-forgotten Wilson, so was surprised to hear his cold, dry bark of a laugh. He asked, “Tell me, what good could I do him? What good have I _ever_ done him? If I were capable of doing any good for him, do you think he’d have been _shot_\--“

This was unusual. Usually Wilson was level-headed, sensible, and steady, even in times of crisis. Cuddy eyed him critically. “How can you expect to protect him from other people’s insanity?”

“He drew it! He practically begged for it!” Wilson ranted, gesticulating. “He might as well have painted on a bull’s eye and handed out firearms! How many people have ever been shot in this hospital? None, absolutely none! This is no coincidence, it happened because House does this to people! He drives them to it.” He stopped, having either run out of steam or become aware of himself. With another deep breath, he said quietly, “Anything I could have done for him, I’ve already tried. Look where it’s gotten us.”

This was going too far. “Oh, boo hoo,” Cuddy snapped, and from Wilson’s shocked expression she knew she was going in the right direction, “you’re such a crappy friend, everything bad that ever happens to House is all your fault. Wilson, your best friend is dying and I sympathize, but I need you to get yourself together. I don’t care how crappy you are, you’re still the best caretaker we’ve got. Understand?”

“Y, yes,” Wilson stuttered, and for a moment Cuddy thought that he was going to add a ‘ma’aam.’

“Good.”

He nodded and then left her, having finally realized that the last thing she needed was an emotional breakdown in her office. In the two or so minutes of peace before she had to face whatever came next, Cuddy buried her face in her hands careful not to smudge her makeup, and just stayed like that, as if that would give her a firmer grasp on this hell-sent day.

The phone rang, and she snapped back to her job of keeping the hospital in one piece.

** _i just can’t sleep_ **

Wilson wasn’t there—as usual—when House finally awoke from his surgery, but, according to hear-say, his first words were: “Did I get the Ketamine?”

Wilson was paged the news at once. Though it was at an unspeakable hour on a Sunday, Wilson threw on some outfit or other, ran out the door, broke all speeding limits on the way over.

House was fading in and out of consciousness, doped up on morphine and needing as much rest as possible. But he stayed awake long enough to pester Wilson. “Why didn’t I get Ketamine?” he half wheezed, half whined, and, because two halves weren’t enough for House, half demanded.

Wilson was not new to illness. He had seen people in some of the worst physical conditions possible. But seeing House naked with only a blanket to cover him, swollen like a newborn baby, various tubes connected to insert and remove liquids from his body, Wilson could barely find the voice to speak. “That wasn’t just death-bed ramblings?”

He didn’t answer immediately and Wilson wondered if he hadn’t fallen back asleep. “It was,” House said laboriously, “But I meant it.”

“We’ll talk about this later,” he promised, “when you’re _not_ in the ICU.”

But the conversation only repeated itself when Cuddy rushed in. After more demands for Ketamine and promises to look into it, Cuddy and Wilson left to let House continue to recuperate.

“Do _you_ know what he’s talking about?” Wilson asked.

“I didn’t, but I had Chase, Foreman, and Cameron look through his files. They found articles on how Ketamine-induced comas can reduce and, in some cases, eliminate chronic pain.”

“What?” It was too unlikely, too wonderful, to be true. “Does it work?”

“The results aren’t conclusive yet. Of course.”

“No wonder he’s fixated. This could change so much, Cuddy!”

“It might not do a thing! And what then? How much are you going to enjoy picking up the pieces?”

“You’re right.” He bit his lip. “If it went wrong, the consequences would be even worse. He’d be crushed—and even if it worked, what then? Would he still be addicted?”

Cuddy shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. How can we know? There are too many possibilities.”

“God.” Wilson started to think about all the things that could happen. If it didn’t work, House would become even more depressed, which was hard to imagine, but if anyone could do it, he was the one. And if it did work, would House necessarily be any happier? He’d find new reasons for misery, most likely. “The worst of it is, I don’t think anything could change his mind.”

“Yeah. There’s no stopping this.” She looked straight into his eyes. “These next few months are going to be hard, Wilson. Make no mistake about that.”

 

**Part II**

** _it’s strange, but it’s true_ **

The next time Wilson visited House, he was less bloated, more aware of his surroundings, and equally demanding that he be placed into a Ketamine-induced coma as soon as possible. “It’s going to happen,” Wilson promised him.

House blinked a few times and took a couple of breaths. Conversations like this, post-surgery, took a long time. Wilson felt a whole new wave of pity and guilt, both of which he squashed as well as he could. Neither emotion would be welcome by House. “Not just pulling my leg?”

“We don’t pull on cripple’s legs.” Wilson didn’t realize he had been baiting him, hunting for a Housian wise-crack, until he didn’t get one. Again he felt guilty for what had happened, even though he knew, mentally, that it hadn’t been his fault.

“When?”

“In a month.”

As weak as he was, House could still pull of an indignant expression with full facial fluency. “That’s a long time.”

“You need to recover from your operation, first.”

“I want to get out of here. I hate it here.”

“I know. You won’t be in the ICU for much longer, and then we’ll start discussing the details, like _why_ you decided on the Ketamine.”

“It’s a long story.” Another deep breath. “Basically, you and Cuddy were right.”

“Right about--?”

House shook his head. Either he didn’t want to tell or he was too tired to get into the explanation. That was all right by Wilson. He’d be out of here and better before long, and then Wilson could press him for all the answers he wanted.

Wilson started to walk away, and then remembered the other thing he wanted to tell House. “It was type II acquired angioedema, by the way.”

“What?”

“That patient you took in before—the patient with the swollen tongue. Your team figured it out. It was type II acquired angioedema.”

Wilson wouldn’t quite make out House’s expression. It might have been pride or disappointment or simple apathy. “Well. Not bad. Not bad at all,” he said, after some consideration.

_ **i threw away my wings** _

The following weekday, Cuddy summoned House’s fellows to her office. They sat in the chairs in front of her desk with Cameron in the center and Chase and Foreman on either side. Cuddy herself sat behind the desk, hands clasped onto the table. “House won’t be back for a few months,” she said.

Cameron nodded intently, like she agreed and approved. Foreman and Chase nodded as well, but it was with more impatience, as if they knew this already and did not want to be told the obvious. In Cuddy’s opinion, they’d gotten too used to openly disapproving with their boss. Here it served them well, but it wasn’t a skill that would translate well elsewhere. They had to learn how to work without House.

“I need to figure out what to do with the Diagnostics department until then,” Cuddy continued.

Foreman wasted no time in suggesting, “we can run it ourselves.”

“Like you did when House was in Baltimore for less than twenty-four hours?” Foreman and Cameron shrank back at this reminder of their recent incompetence. Though Cuddy could tell that they got the point, she drove it in even further. “You were on the phone with him for most of the time he was gone!”

“We did, however, solve the last case,” Cameron sprang quickly back to their defense, “all on our own. We’ve improved since last year, since six months ago, since _one_ month ago. And it’d be ridiculous, I think, to shut down the department down completely.”

Cuddy noticed that Chase, as usual, was keeping out of the fray. She shoved him right into it. “What do you think, Chase?”

Cameron, her comment ignored, looked like she wanted to blow a fuse but wasn’t anywhere near angry enough to do so. As for Chase, he shifted in his seat, uncrossing his legs and then crossing them again. “I think it’s risky. Someone might die.”

“Someone might die without us!” Cameron protested. “Without House, we might not be the best anymore, but we certainly won’t be the worst.” Chase simply uncrossed his legs again and looked in another direction.

“What else would we do until he got back?” Foreman asked.

Cuddy tapped her fingers against the table. “There’s always clinic duty. Or I could transfer you into other departments. We’re understaffed and all three of you would be welcome in other departments.”

“But how would it look like if we closed shop just because one of us was out?” Foreman argued. “Like Cameron said, it’d be ridiculous, and I know how much the hospital depends on the Diagnostic Department’s reputation.”

“I agree,” Cameron said. “It would undermine our image. It’d cause us more damage in the long run.”

“Everyone knows that House is the brain that runs this operation! We’re nothing without him.” Chase leaned forward towards Cuddy, “How about a nice rise in deaths, how great would that be for our ‘image’?”

Foreman turned to look at Chase. “Oh my god,” he said, “are you _still_ sucking up? He’s not even here!”

“Enough!” Cuddy exclaimed. All three snapped to attention. She returned to a speaking-level of voice. “Both are valid points—that I’ve already taken into consideration. I’ve decided to let you keep working in Diagnostics, but at the first sign that you’re in over your heads, we’ll transfer the patient and close the department until House comes back. Oh, and you’re not allowed to ask him for help. The last thing he needs is to be chased by work.”

“…So who’s going to be in charge?” Foreman asked.

With her arms crossed, Cameron said, “I suppose you think you’re up to the task.”

“As do you,” Foreman retorted.

“I wasn’t the one who became a laughing-stock—“ Cameron said.

“This bickering,” Cuddy interrupted, “has got to stop. At the very least learn how not to do it in front of me. Did you think that that exchange would make me any more inclined to promote either one of you? At any rate,” Cuddy waved her hand at Foreman, “I’ve already chosen him. Laughing-stock or not, he has the experience, and the hardest part of his job was managing House. I suspect that that won’t be an issue this time. That’s all, you can go now.”

Only Foreman was pleased, Cuddy could tell, but she was glad that, this time, they refrained from fighting. They were probably waiting until she were out of her earshot starting up again. She could also tell that Cameron would come back to her office before long to complain about the unfairness of the situation and to argue that she should be the temporary department head. It was all a part of hospital politics, though, and Cuddy was more than used to it.

 

** _and if you can get it, won’t you tell me how_ **

As Cuddy had predicted, Cameron was in her office a few short hours later. “I don’t get it,” she complained, “Foreman has not only shown poor leadership qualities in the past, he’s broken ethical guidelines—“

“You mean he stabbed you in the back and, from what I heard, you forgave him for that.”

“Yeah, but it still doesn’t change what he did.”

“Well.” Cuddy pursed her lips. “Then I’ll trust that his life-changing experience has turned him into a well-behaved boy that’ll play nicely with his peers.”

“Is that supposed to be an insult?” Cameron asked, sitting up like she was getting ready to be attacked or to do the attacking herself.

“It’s a veiled insult. I don’t think you understood what I told you when Foreman stole your article, Cameron. This career? Isn’t about politeness and who’s nicest. You want to get ahead in this game, show me that you deserve it. Whining, by the way, is not deserving. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good that you’re indignant over not getting the temporary head of staff. But your anger is misdirected. _Do_ something.”

Cameron did not look any more pleased leaving her office than she had coming in.

 

_ **there are places i remember** _

Time ceased to make sense to House; he lost track of entire days. People and their faces blurred. He might have seen his parents at one point, his mother anxiously filling the atmosphere with the most cheerful chatter she can supply. His father was grim, silent. Then again, he might have dreamt them up.

He has the impression that his employees also showed up, but that’s all it is, an impression.

Cuddy he sees many times, which pleased him more than he would have like.

Wilson, he seemed to be there constantly. It was as if, to summon him to his bedside, all House had to do was turn and there he would be, worried and martyred.

He thought it ridiculous of Wilson to come so often; his being there wouldn’t make a difference in the long run. It weren’t as if House were going to die if he were alone. On the other hand, his anxiety weakened when Wilson was there. Was it relief that he felt?

With or without the company, House just wanted leave the ICU. He did know not how he survived so long there. The only thing that kept him hanging going were the promises he made to himself about all the things he was going to change once he got out of there.

He dreamt of all the things he’d wanted to for the past seven years and all the things he never bothered to consider, barred by his deformation and pain.

He dreamt of a better life.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part III**

_ **i feel like i win when i lose** _

Foreman’s second time around as the head of the Diagnostics Department was not going as well he had hoped. It was not, in fact, going well by any definition of the word.

While they had worked together to solve Christopher’s case, with type II acquired angioedema, that was before Cuddy had destroyed their natural hierarchy by temporarily promoting him. Foreman didn’t mind the promotion, far from it. He was satisfied. But if he were to face facts, which he had to, if things stayed this way he wouldn’t last long as the boss.

He was trying to propose what their next case should be, but Cameron was shooting down all of his suggestions by listing possible but not definite explanations for their symptoms. Chase made a comment here and there but for the most part he was busy staring off into space and tapping out, with a pencil against his thigh, the beat of whatever drum he danced to.

This called for a change in tactics.

“I know that you don’t take me seriously,” Foreman started, hands clasped on the table and leaning forward towards Cameron.

Chase snorted. “If you’re going to say things like that, no.”

Foreman ignored him. He would get to him later, though if he managed to swing Cameron his way, then Chase would probably follow grudgingly.

For the first time since their meeting with Cuddy, Cameron gave him a proper, civil response. “I take you seriously, Foreman. But I don’t trust you as the boss.”

“Which amounts to the same thing,” Foreman said. “And I can’t run this department by myself. I could _try_, but then Cuddy would fire me by the end of the week. In other words,” he cleared his throat—it had to be said, but it was difficult to get out—“I can’t do this alone.”

Chase and Cameron glanced at each other to gauge the other’s reaction. Neither one seemed to know how to interpret that. “It’s not as if we’re going to walk out on you,” Chase pointed out.

“No, but we can make his life difficult,” Cameron remarked.

Foreman refrained from mentioning that they were already making his life difficult.

Chase drummed his pencil a couple of times against the table. “Cameron! Aren’t you supposed to be the nice one?”

“Being the nice one,” Cameron replied, not without some bitterness, “got me my article stolen, overlooked for the position as the temporary Department head, and less heard around here. Screw being the nice one.”

Chase put the tip of his pencil in between his front teeth, but he didn’t look alarmed, just pleasantly surprised.

“Which brings us back to my point,” Foreman said, “I’m not House.”

“He realizes it!” Chase faked a gasp, which, in the interests of diplomacy, Foreman ignored.

“I’m not House,” Foreman repeated, “and I realize it. It’s a bad thing in some ways, but for you two, it’s more of a good thing. I won’t mercilessly mock you, make anyone’s life hell, or make our Department into daily lawsuit-bait. Most of all, I can _compromise_. Don’t like something? Let’s talk about it.”

“How novel,” Cameron said dryly.

“Seriously, Cameron.” Foreman was a bit pained. This is all that compromise could get him?

“Then, seriously, Foreman, I want you to sign an article I have ready to publish.” Cameron was holding herself very tightly together, as she often did when she wanted to look as convincing as possible.

“Done,” Foreman said.

“By tomorrow.”

“Done.”

“And I want you to accept to take on any of the cases I bring in—with no mocking, teasing, or refusals.”

“Done.” This was more like it, Foreman thought.

Cameron studied him for a moment or two, probably calculating how much further she could take this. “I want to be able to run whatever exams I want to without getting your permission first.”

“Done. Anything else?”

“I’ll let you know.”

Foreman smirked to himself. Trust her to write herself a blank check. “We’ll discuss it.”

“Okay.” She nodded, looking more satisfied than Foreman had seen her in months. “You know? I think this _is_ going to work out.” She then left to fill in her hours at the clinic.

“So, hey, boss,” Chase said, “don’t _I_ get any perks?”

Foreman raised an eyebrow. “Is there something you want?”

“Wouldn’t mind a raise.”

“That’s beyond my powers—I’m not your _real_ boss.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.” Chase still looked as smug as Cameron had when she had walked out. Was it because Foreman had just admitted that he wasn’t his real boss or was he getting some kick out of all this?

“What are you so pleased about, anyway?”

“I’m thinking that that was very smart of you.” Chase waggled his pencil at Foreman. “You give a little, you get a lot, and save yourself a bottle of migraine medicine.”

“It’s not like that,” Foreman tried to laugh it off, “it’s a compromise, not—“

“Call it whatever you want. It’s still self-preservation and pretty smart. Better than the last time you tried to squash us all. What made you wisen up?”

Foreman didn’t know how to answer, so he threw out a generic answer. “Experience.”

With a bit of a grin, “Does it have anything to do with the lobotomy?”

If there was one term Foreman did not like to use in reference to his brain surgery, it was ‘lobotomy.’ However, two years under House had taught him that it was best to not let show the things that bothered you, so he did not take complain about Chase’s language. “No, of course not.”

“No lingering life-changing effects?”

“No,” Foreman said, this time unable to hide back his irritation, “it turns out that you don’t wake up one morning and say, ‘it’s all so different!’ You don’t snap your fingers and become a new person.”

“Hmmm,” Chase said, and left it at that.

Foreman wasn’t sure where Chase stood on the whole cooperation thing, but when he took up again his previous lists of suggestions, this time Chase paid attention and actively participated, so Foreman figured he was willing to go along with the flow. And that was good enough for him.

 

** _leaping off into the unknown_ **

“And you won’t change your mind.” It wasn’t a question, because Cuddy already knew the answer. House’s reputation as the most stubborn man in New Jersey was well-earned.

“If I tattooed ‘GIMME KETAMINE’ to my forehead, would you stop asking?” House’s usual habit of using humor as a weapon now felt like a balm to Cuddy. With every passing day that House recovered, his sarcasm became sharper and his wit more cutting. Cuddy was grateful.

“No, I wouldn’t, and you’d have to deal with everyone else asking you what kind of a nutjob you are. Anyway…. if you’re ready—“

“I’ve been ready this whole past month,” House complained.

As she administered the drugs, she tried to not think of the last time she had placed House in a chemically-induced coma. If things went as well as House had been saying it would, then repeating this one step would erase the physical effects of the infarction: before, under her care, he had lost the use of a leg. Now he would regain it.

She would be free of the guilt.

However, if this went wrong, House would blame everyone and everything, including Cuddy, even if he was the one who made the decision.

He really was impossible to deal with.

In a few seconds he was out. His expression, looking deceptively like he was just taking a brief nap, was so peaceful that it made Cuddy wonder how he could cause her so many problems.

“He’ll be all right,” Wilson said. After a moment’s pause, he added, “Maybe.”

“He’ll be fine,” Cuddy said, “but there are infinite degrees of ‘fine.’”

 

** _Special K_ **

“No pain? Seriously?” Cameron asked, not quite in disbelief, but with a worry that the answer would snatch back the hope she had just found.

“We’ll, I’ve these pains in my neck,” House said, pointedly eyeing Cameron, Foreman, and Chase. Chase was the only one to chuckle at the joke, though Wilson, hanging at the back of the room, smiled. “Chase, for crying out loud, save the sucking up for when I’m back to work. Now I’m just The Guy Who Just Woke Up From His Magical Coma.”

“I see that the lack of pain hasn’t improved your disposition any,” Foreman commented, but the sting of the words was belied by a certain affectionate tone of voice.

The three of them had planned on sticking around longer, but unfortunately, someone brought up the subject of the Diagnostics Department, as was inevitable, which only led to House asking about their cases, with the implication that they must be running around like headless chickens without his guidance. Wilson reminded them that Cuddy didn’t want House engaging in _any_ work during his recovery, which ended the subject and, as it turned out, they had little else to talk about. House shooed them away; he’d have to put with them sooner or later, better let him miss them while he could.

“And you, Dr. Wilson,” House said, “what’s running through _your_ devious mind?”

“Mine? Devious?” Wilson feigned innocence.

“You’ve been smirking to yourself since you came in, and if _that_ doesn’t spell ‘evil master plan,’ then everything I ever learned was wrong.”

“Hah hah.” Wilson got up from the wall against which he’d been leaning and sat in the chair next to the bed. “So what’s it like? Life without pain, I mean.”

“If you were to ask…” House hmm-ed to himself, loud and dramatic and then exclaimed, “Painless!”

“But really,” Wilson asked, still smiling. “How is it?”

“Really? I’ve got all kinds of back aches from lying in this goddamned bed for the past fifty thousand years and my neck is cramping up because this stupid pillow I’ve been using for the same fifty thousand years is made out of low-quality pebbles. It’s a hoot. But this,” he tapped his thigh, “is as quiet as you please.”

“And you have no urges for Vico—“ House shot him a dirty look, and Wilson shut up. Now that House was off the opiate, having gone through the worst of the detox during the coma, ‘Vicodin’ had become more offensive than a four-letter word. “But, so, stuck-in-bed-itis aside, all good?”

“Better than good!”

“S’good,” Wilson said and lapsed there, still grinning lightly and, in House’s opinion, suspiciously.

“Spit it out,” House advised, “otherwise you’ll turn blue and suffocate, and I do not plan to spend my painfree, all-limbed life in prison for manslaughter.”

“I’m not holding back anything!” Wilson protested. “What makes you think I am?”

“You look _way_ happier than anyone should feel because someone _else_ feels better. You’re not planning on taking advantage of my new and improved condition, are you?”

“Funny, I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“Why, do _you_ have some new and improved condition I should know about?” House angled his head this way and that, inspecting Wilson from head to toe. “I don’t _see_ anything, so if it’s an under-the-clothes change, you’ll have to strip—“

“Nope, I’m the same old boring me,” Wilson said cheerfully enough, “a three time divorcé with no prospects besides burrowing myself further and further into my career. I was going to ask what your plans are. What comes next?”

“Next? You smuggle me in MacDonald’s fries so that I can get a my first decent meal since I let Cuddy knock me out for seven days, and then, after that, I’ll get a night of decent and proper sleep for the first time in seven years.” House paused. “Seven is a mystical number, isn’t it? God resting after doing a whole lot of work, the number of Islamic heavens, the seven virtues—“

“Don’t forget the seven sins. But what I was referring to a bit further in the future. Physiotherapy, I suppose you’ll blow that off completely? Finding new hobbies besides Vicodin-gobbling? Maybe you’ll finally get started on the world domination thing, I know you’ve had that on the backburner for a while, maybe it’s time to finally start it up.”

House grinned. “No, I haven’t put that one off at all. It’s been in the works, you just haven’t known about it.”

“Ah.” Wilson nods. “So, it’ll be the same old, same old, minus the pain?“

“I wouldn’t say that,” House said. “There’s no reason why I can’t pick up some new things. Like extreme sports. Always wanted to try my hand at ice-climbing. Or maybe I’ll learn how to ride a unicycle. Nothing quite so dashing as a unicycle, right?”

“Yes, we secretly replaced the Ketamine with a secret radioactive potion that’s made you invincible, so you better start planning those unicycle marathons.” His tone was friendly, sarcasm none withstanding. “We don’t even know if you’ll be able to walk again.”

“Details,” and House waved as though he were wiping away pesky and unnecessary things like they were only so much dirt and cobwebs.

“But you don’t have anything more prosaic in mind? Traveling, maybe?”

“You’ll see,” was the most that House would provide.

 

** _and i don’t know if it’s a miracle or the chemicals in us_ **

The months passed and brought amazing, unexpected things. Miracles, some might, and did, call them, but House gave God neither thought nor credit for his feats.

A man who did not have the physical structure to talk without aids took his first steps. This alone was cause to make Cuddy, upon hearing the news, let out a choked sob of relief and for Wilson to turn his head away for a second, as to tame his reaction.

As for House, he wasn’t impressed yet. He had more to do.

Those first few slow, tentative steps became confident, then fast. That evolved into running. Steps, then whole flights of staircases, became surmountable. He relearned how to kneel, how to put all his weight on his right leg.

After that, House wanted to try out all possible. It turned out that it _was_ possible to forget how to ride a bicycle, and he spent a few days mastering a new way to balance his weight with his still-deficient thigh. But before long he was riding for feet, blocks, hours.

Skateboarding, horseback, riding, swimming, diving—if it was a physical activity, then House wanted to do it.

House was lauded for his physical achievements, but if there was one thing he was truly grateful for, the one thing he came close to thanking God for, it was the absence of pain.

He thought himself in control of his life again.

 

**Part IV**

** _don't need a credit card to make my charge complete_ **

No matter how many times he saw it, Wilson still couldn’t quite get over the sight of House on the treadmill, pounding onto the track as he jogged at four, six, miles per hour. Wilson couldn’t keep up that kind of pace even if he wanted to! It was inspirational, not to mention worrying, given that Wilson kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

House was not aware that the first shoe had dropped much less that the other one was balancing precariously on the edge. Rather, he was smugness personified. Wilson knew that the smugness was partially his fault; an audience for his successes only increased House’s vanity.

House jabbed the stop button and, with his pristine white towel, wiped away the sweat from his face and neck. Wilson suspected he was mostly showing off;. Unfortunately, it was pretty effective. “You should get on one of these yourself,” House said, smirking.

“Watching you was enough of a work-out,” Wilson replied. This earned him a snort.

House started into a set of stretching exercises, and Wilson, telling himself that there was nothing better to look at, watched. “Do you—miss it?”

“Miss what?” House asked, pulling his head towards one shoulder, and then the other.

“The pain.”

He glanced at Wilson, irritated. “Yes, I miss that searing jolt every time I move my leg forward when the Vicodin was wearing off. I miss lying in bed for twenty minutes, waiting for the latest surge to calm down enough for me to sit up, and another ten to stand up. I miss the pain, I miss the humiliation, and the self-hatred. Of all the stupid questions, that one takes the cake and gobbles it up.”

In order to diffuse the further onset of a bad mood, Wilson said, “You must at least miss the handicap parking.”

“Who said I’m giving it up? I still have this missing thunk of thigh. I know how to feign a limp.”

“What about the other parts of your old lifestyle? The easy excuse for everything, from skipping out on fund-raisers to your general hatred to all things in existence.”

“For one, I do not hate macadamia nuts, thus invalidating your second statement. Second, I never needed the pain as an excuse. I do things because I want to, not because I think I can get away with them. By the way, couldn’t you just gawk at me in silence instead of keeping up this inquisition?”

“I am not gawking and I’m just thinking about the things you refuse to. You feel good now? Great. What about later, when things get harder? You can’t expect that just because your body is perfect again that you can pick up everything else in your life where you left it off. You can’t expect happiness from just a dose of Ketamine, like you used to try with Vicodin. You’re going to have to earn that happiness.”

“I’m not listening,” House warned. “Your words? In one ear, out the other.” He did one last stretch, extending his arms behind him and raising his shoulders. “I’m done here. I’m going to shower, which you’re welcome to watch, so long as you promise to shut the hell up.”

Wilson turned down House’s offer in favor of not shutting up.

 

** _a change of hair color, clairol baby blond _ **

After House was allowed to go back home, he still had to come back to the hospital for physical therapy. For the first few days House would drop by Wilson’s office afterwards, but a couple of days passed by without any appearances. “I didn’t realize that the world would implode if we went twenty-four hours without seeing each other,” House said when asked.

The physical therapy didn’t last long—House was soon running circles around his therapists—and he stopped coming to the hospital altogether. Wilson called House to make up for the lack, though he refrained from suggesting that they hang out, preferring that the invitation come from House. When he received none, however, Wilson caved in and suggested that they get around to that Terminator marathon that they’d been planning since the third film came out. He figured that the allure of mocking Arnold Schwarzenegger would be enough to convince him.

“Ooo, no can do, buddy,” House said. “I’m booked for ice skating.”

“When did you go from bemoaning ice hokey to _skating_? Do you even know how?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Need company?” Wilson hadn’t skated in years, but he hadn’t been bad at it as a kid.

“Already have company.”

“A skating instructor?” Wilson guessed. It didn’t seem likely, but unless House was referring to the other skaters at the rink, he couldn’t think of who else would go with him.

“You could call her that. But I prefer to call her ‘the bosomy redhead I picked up last night.’ If any of my fantasies for tomorrow come true, I can add ‘scantily clad’ to her title.”

Wilson nearly dropped the phone. “It’s a _date_?”

“Is this twenty questions? And, yes, it’s a date. Or at least I think it is. I could be wrong, I’ll ask her when I see her tomorrow. And _before_ you say another word, I don’t care if you think it’s a good idea or not to do this while I’m still adapting to the changes from the shooting and the Ketamine etcetera etcetera etcetera. I’m doing this.”

Wilson, before House’s determination, kept himself from expressing those very thoughts. “Well, you’re determined, and I guess it’s good that you’re trying out new things… don’t forget the condoms.”

House laughed and with that, Wilson knew that he meant to sleep with her. He thought that that was as equally or worse an idea than the ice skating and the date, but he had no concrete reason why aside from an intensely negative feeling.

 

** _your music is shite, it keeps me up all night_ **

A couple of days later, House called Wilson. “Where are you living now?” he asked.

Wilson knew that, should he never get an apartment, House would inevitably discover his roofless condition. But he’d never found the courage to take up living alone again. He’d taken solace in the illusion of temporariness that the hotel had provided. “The Marriott, room 453.”

“…Since when have you been living in a hotel?”

“Since when did you stop paying attention?”

House had no answer for that, so instead he told him to be ready for him “A.S.A.P.”

“A.S.A.P.” turned out to be two hours. House came in sweaty, red-faced, and short of breath. He made himself at home at once: he pulled off his shirt, dunked his head beneath the faucet and, cooling preparations concluded, he plopped himself without ceremony onto the bed.

Wilson couldn’t help but notice how much House’s muscles stood out; he looked like he lifted heavy boxes for a living. He didn’t have much to compare it to, since before the Ketamine House didn’t have the self-confidence and physical arrogance to walk around half-naked, so Wilson didn’t know how much was due to the recent activity and how much to the years of walking with the aid of his upper body.

“I bet you’re dying to get your greedy, grubby fingers on the details of my date,” House said, grinning sloppily.

Wilson was and wasn’t. “I stayed up all night thinking about it,” which wasn’t entirely false. He hadn’t slept well, thinking of what House had gotten himself into and what the long-term consequences would be for short-term recklessness. But he felt safer behind the shield of sarcasm, and he knew that House would take it as Wilsonian humor and not the truth.

“Your sleepless nights are over- I’m gonna tell you _all_ about it.”

“Goody,” Wilson said, and pulled a chair up to the bed. “I take it that it went well, then? I can’t imagine you running all the way over here to regale me about if it hadn’t.”

“Biked,” House corrected, “it’s too far away for running. But, yes, a good time was had by all, including, dare I say, her.” He winked at Wilson, and something about a winking, topless House lazing on a bed made him uncomfortable. But if he told him to put his shirt back on, House would stay topless just to spite him.

“Is she going to follow the pattern and move in with you within a week?”

“What? No! Far to much yapping. No body, no matter how great in the sack, is worth that much inane chit-chat.”

“Yapping?”

“It happens. But that’s not the important part.” House was grinning ear to ear.

“Let me guess: the important part is that you got laid.” Wilson said, with a bit of sigh.

“Bingo!”

“For the first time since…?”

House went from cat-that-ate-canary pleased to irked. “I don’t bug you about _your_ sex life.”

“What! Last week you asked me the same thing and then thanked me for keeping my genes to myself.”

“Bug and ask. They’re two very different actions. Speaking of which, have you had any since I last asked?”

“House,” Wilson said, shaking his head.

“No worries, pal, we all go through dry spells.”

He’s just gloating, Wilson told himself. He’s glad that he can do normal things again without being bogged down by his Achilles’ thigh. It’s not personal. It’s anything but personal; he’s just picking on the closest, most convenient target. Not that thinking of himself as the most convenient target improved Wilson’s self-confidence any.

“Look, it’s good that you’re trying new things out, but you’ve got to think about the long-term too.”

“I do. I saw that she’s a yapper. So, in the long term, I won’t ever call her again. There’s other, how does that expression go, oh, yes. There’s more fish swimming around waiting to be fished.”

“But what are you trying to prove? Do you think you’ll find any satisfaction this way, with easy dates and lays?”

“I _feel_ plenty satisfied. Does that count, Dr. Wilson?”

“It’s temporary.”

“Life is temporary. What more do you want? I’m a man at the top of the world. I’m good to go.”

“Not at the top of his delusions? You’re just getting started. If anything, you’re at the bottom of the barrel.”

“Bottom, top, same thing. There’s plenty of choices and options. I’m just getting started, and that’s a _good_ thing.”

Wilson sighed. “Your team, by the way, they’ve been quite—“

“Woah, woah, woah!” House held up his hands. “Not so fast there, stud.”

Wilson blinked. “Don’t you want to know what they’re up to?”

“Can’t. Cuddy has strictly forbidden intercommunication.”

“You obey Cuddy since…?”

“When it fits so neatly into my plans of laziness, who am I to fight against the yoke of tyranny?”

“Aren’t you at all curious?”

“Eh, there’ll be there, the same as ever, when I get back. More interesting would be my weekend, don’t you think? Well—“

Wilson hung on to every word, fascinated in spite of himself.

 

** _the only film I saw I didn’t like it at all_ **

The second woman House took out he classified as “hysterical” and, according to him, they didn’t make it through an entire day. He had said it was because if he had stayed any longer he would have suffered a heart attack simply to put an end to the horror. Wilson laughed at House’s impersonations of her fussing over her salad and her insistence at pronouncing the wines correctly in her heavy American accent. The laughter was partially because the impersonations _were_ funny and partially because of the relief Wilson felt.

The third woman fared better than the first two: she lasted almost a whole week. In that period, Wilson and House had tried to one-up each other on jokes to the theme of the third try being the charm. One afternoon, however, House called him up and launched into a tirade about the general idiocy of the entire race.

“What did she do wrong?” Wilson asked.

“She’s a hypochondriac,” House said, full of loathing. “And a serial doctor dater! Her idea of a pick-up place is a clinic! I’ll send her your way, the way she blows into tissues and fantasizes over what diseases are eating away at her liver should appeal to you. She’s all the attention-begging you ever dreamed of without the risk of actually having her die.”

It seemed odd that House, the great observer, could go so long without picking up such essential characteristics. Wilson asked him about it, which prompted a diatribe about the deceptiveness and scheming ways of humans. He went on at such length that Wilson was forced, after pointedly saying goodbye, to hang up on him, since House hadn’t let him work in a single word about having an imminent patient consult. The consult mercifully distracted him from wondering about why the anxiety that had been gnawing at him all week had eased into nothingness as soon as he realized that the third was not, in fact, the charm.

Afterwards, he found the perfect justification for his repeated relief: House was starting to realize that dating wasn’t as simple as balancing an equation and that a painless body was not the answer key he’d been searching for all these years. There was no way to cheat his way into a happier life. This was a valuable lesson to learn, Wilson thought, and he made sure to let House know. The fact that House listened, dourly, suggested that he was indeed reaching that conclusion on his own.

House didn’t call Wilson to tell him about how the date with the fourth woman had gone. Up until now he had been forthwith, _eager_, to pass on the news about his conquests, as if relating them to Wilson would affirm their reality. Gossip does give substance to an event.

The fact that he hadn’t called, Wilson surmised, meant that things with this woman had gone even worse than the three previous ones combined. He dropped by House’s place with the flimsy pretext of giving him health insurance forms to fill out, confident that he wouldn’t have to ask anything at all. After all, in the worst of his depressions House did seek solitude, but if company found him, then he was only too willing to share his misery.

It was not, however, always successful.

House dumped the forms to the side, well on his way to losing this set like he had the first one. “I cannot wait to go back to work,” House declared, and Wilson could tell that he was not going to willingly volunteer information on that fourth woman.

“It’s just another couple of weeks, I’m sure you won’t explode until then.”

“Nuh-uh, I go back on Monday. Cuddy said I could as soon as she heard about how I’m jogging six miles a day now.” He leered. “I think she just wants to see my newly-worked out body. I swear, that woman is a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen.”

Lechery aside, which always lent to House an extra quality of exuberance, he seemed to be cheerful at the prospect of returning to the hospital. Wilson quickly weighed the pros and cons of this move. “Are you ready?” he asked. “And _sane_? I thought you had plans to spend the last weeks having a blast, working yourself out into a coma and sleeping with anything in sight.”

House wrinkled his face. “Medicine far beats women.”

“You’re giving up? Entirely?”

“Why, yes, I’m going to have the female sex extinguished from the face of the planet. That’ll serve ‘em.” He made a wiping motion with his hand, to demonstration how exactly this extinguishing would work.

“You can’t just give up!” Wilson exclaimed, without thinking.

House tilted his head to the side and crossed his arms. House with his arms crossed was still a bit of a novelty, since he hadn’t done much of that when one of his arms had been occupied with holding onto a cane. Wilson knew that there would be adjustments for everybody, but the things that changed were still unexpected. “That sounds like a new tune you’re playing there, Mr. You’re Not Ready Yet. You were against me dating.”

It figured that House had known, even though Wilson hadn’t said as much. “You weren’t ready,” Wilson supplied smoothly, “and this is precisely the reason why. You’d get easily discouraged and give up altogether.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“I don’t see _you_ hunting for Mrs. Wilson the Fourth.”

It was as if he had known exactly what kind of thoughts Wilson had been having about his wives and the future of his love life, despite never once having talked about it with him. “I’m not ready either,” Wilson said, automatically going on the defense. Whenever House started to pry into that particular subject, it was a sure sign that the conversation was going to get ugly.

“Scaredy cat,” House muttered.

“Right back at you,” Wilson retorted. When in doubt, reflect the argument back onto House, even if through juvenile means. It worked on him, since he was juvenile, and House, in his vanity, generally liked having the subject return to himself.

“Work,” House said, “is what I need. This lifestyle? Isn’t me. Now, diagnostics, _that_’s what I do.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Part V**

_ **news that can’t be contained** _

“Did you hear?” Chase asked, dropping his bag next to his usual seat at the table.

“Mmm?” Cameron replied, more engaged with her notes than the conversation. Her glasses were perilously close to slipping off her nose altogether and crashing onto her notebook, but she seemed unaware of this imminent peril. But however wrapped up in her work she was, Chase knew that she wouldn’t want to miss this.

“House comes back on Monday,” he said, smug to be the bringer of such news.

“What?” That got her attention, all right. She looked up and automatically pushed her glasses further up with her index finger. “But he’s not scheduled to come back until next month!”

“Maybe he misses us,” Chase suggested, but it was only to get a rise out of Cameron.

“Who misses who?” Foreman had arrived just in time to need to make the conversation start all over again.

“House is coming back on Monday,” Cameron supplied before Chase could open his mouth, stealing his thunder. Not that Chase minded. He expected it of her. He sat down, leaned back, and draped his arm along the back of his chair.

Foreman frowned. “But—“

“Yeah, not for another couple of weeks, we know,” Cameron cut him. “What we _don’t_ know is why.”

“If he misses us,” Foreman said, smirking slightly at Chase, “it’s because he wants to get back to torturing us.” Chase smirked back at him, and Cameron became irritated at the lack of seriousness displayed by her colleagues.

“No, really,” she insisted, “what’s bringing him back? He avoids work whenever he can.”

“He’s probably bored, Cameron,” Foreman said, and Chase nodded in agreement. “A couple of days off work? Is nice. But it seems like even House gets itchy without his job.”

“There’s only so many hookers you can go through in a month,” and again Chase and Foreman shared a smile. Cameron didn’t contest his statement, like Chase had half-expected her to. Perhaps she thought the same thing, even if she wouldn’t joke about it.

“I guess we’ll never know,” Cameron said, “since it’s not as if he’d tell us himself.”

“Ain’t that’s the truth!” Chase said.

“We should go out for dinner,” Foreman said, out of the blue, and Chase could not have been more stunned had he pulled out a hoola-hoop and started to sing the Macarena. A quick glance at Cameron confirmed that he wasn’t alone in his befuddlement, which was a comfort. “A celebratory dinner. For the fact that we didn’t burn anything down or kill anyone.”

“Is this meant to be your final, glorious display of command?” Chase asked suspiciously.

“Of course,” Foreman said, being, of course, sarcastic.

“It’s a good idea,” and here Chase felt a flare of resentment that she had so quickly gotten over the shock and had jumped straight onto the bandwagon. “We’ve never done anything like that before. It’d be nice.”

Her definition of ‘nice’ had to be vastly different from Chase’s. To him, ‘nice’ were kittens playing with ribbons and convenience stores existing anywhere you cared to look.

But that wasn’t to say that Foreman’s idea was bad. Cameron and Foreman were looking at him expectantly and he didn’t want to be the one that played badly with the other kids and dropped the ball. “Then it’s a done deal,” Chase said, and that was that.

 

** _i can’t be owned by no one _ **

“To…” Foreman raised his glass in toast and seemed to remember too late that he needed to name someone or something. “To us,” he finally decided, and Chase and Cameron toasted with him.

“And to House,” Chase suggested, eyebrows lifted suggestively and with some note of warning in his voice, as if to remind them that if they forgot him, House himself would come down on them and smite them for their hubris. Probably for reasons that did not include that particular fear, Cameron and Foreman toasted to that as well.

They settled into a conversation about recent staff changes, including the latest wave of fresh medical students—with wry comments about how much House was going to love walking into a hospital filled with clueless and proud neophytes—and the nature of their recent work load.

“When we first started out, there were zero applications, weren’t there?” Chase reminisced.

“We went into the negative numbers, actually,” Cameron corrected, “one of the previous applicants retracted their file, saying that they were going to Sacred Heart instead.”

“Sacred Heart!” Foreman exclaimed, with a chuckle. “They really did think we were going to screw up.”

“’No, we only want the annoying bastard!’” Chase said in falsetto, holding a hand to his cheek in fake surprise. “’We won’t take anyone else!’”

Cameron laughed. “Think we worked up a reputation of our own?”

“Of relentlessly demanding that people put themselves in our clutches, maybe,” Foreman joked.

“It got us patients, didn’t it,” Cameron defended. In their first month flying solo, she had reviewed the entries from all the other departments, seeking cases that would fall into their line of work. Once found, she then badgered the patients into delivering themselves to Diagnostic’s.

“House is going to think that we’re crazy—we could have spent all that time doing nothing!” Chase said.

“Yeah,” Cameron said, looking down at the table. “How do you think he’ll—be?”

“The same,” Foreman and Chase said in unison, and then promptly looked at each other to scold the other for stealing their line.

“But he’s _walking_,” Cameron insisted, “and more, from the sound of it.”

“But he’ll still be a miserable bastard,” Foreman said.

“I _hope_ not,” Cameron said. “Surely he’s a bit happier.”

“We’ll see,” Chase said and clearly meant that he thought Cameron was being excessively optimistic. “How about you, Foreman? Sad to let your elevated status go?”

“I cry myself to sleep,” Foreman deadpanned. “But, seriously, no. Knowing it was temporary this time made a difference. I’m just glad I got the chance, especially since it’ll give me an extra boost during my job interviews.”

“Job interviews? You’re leaving us?” Cameron asked.

“What’s the matter, time and distance have made you so terrified of House that you’ve got to run away?” Chase teased.

“Uh, my fellowship contract expires in a few months. As do yours. In fact, you’re down to your last month, Chase.”

Chase shrugged. “I was planning on sticking around. House can say whatever he wants about how incompetent I am, but he likes sticking with what he’s used to, and he’s used to me.”

“You like it here that much?” Foreman asked.

“Yeah, don’t you?”

“Not quite.” Foreman shook his head. “I only stayed so long because, well, you can’t learn what House has to teach anywhere else. I’ll be using what I learned here for the rest of my career. Though I don’t plan to follow his, er, unconventional legacy.”

“Yeah,” Cameron said, distantly, staring at the glint of light on her wine glass.

“Well, we already know it’s not the _job_ Cameron likes,” Foreman said.

But Cameron just kept on looking at her glass. “Um, earth to Cameron,” Chase said.

“What?” she said, and then, “were you talking to me?”

“Kind of,” Chase said, “we were just implying that you stick around because you’re madly in love with House.”

“Because women are incapable of being motivated by anything else, ever,” Cameron rolled her eyes. “I respect him and that’s why I’m here. Like Foreman, this is a learning experience for me.”

“But I bet you want to stick around after your fellowships ends,” Foreman said.

“I don’t know,” Cameron admitted, “I’d like to—try something new. But I haven’t decided yet.”

“You better decide fast,” Foreman said, “you don’t have too much time left.”

“I know,” she said, “I know.”

 

**Part VI**

_ **it’s a nuclear show and the stars are gone** _

It was not at all surprising that, within a half hour of House’s first day back at work, Wilson heard his name being bellowed out from the balcony.

Wilson held back a fond smile and left his papers to see what the fuss was about.

House jumped over the wall dividing their balconies and was resolutely marching towards Wilson. Behind him, congregated at the doorway were the three fellows, hanging back as though they knew they shouldn’t be there but couldn’t quite resist the impulse. A quick glance suggested that Cameron and Foreman were becoming impatient and that Chase was blasé.

“Wilson,” House repeated, “how could you let this _happen_?” He was waving at his employees behind him, his arm moving at a vigorous, frantic rate, as though where he pointed was a disaster too large for human comprehension. “How _could_ you?”

“They look to be in one piece,” Wilson noted.

“Not for long they won’t be!” House snarled. In the corner of Wilson’s eye he noticed Chase taking a step back. “Did you even know what they were up to? Or did you let them run wild, naked and without a care for anything that society took all that trouble to ingrain into them!”

“For crying out loud, House, don’t make a mountain out of a--” Foreman’s objection was interrupted before he could finish.

“You! None of you! Are allowed to speak.” House threw a glare back at them to remind them that they were in his bad graces and to suggest that another word would earn them a free and direct trip to the ground floor.

“If I recall,” Wilson said, trying to bring calm House down, “you’re the one who didn’t want to hear what they were up to. And I don’t know if solving five cases in two and a half months could be considered ‘running wild.’ It’s not up to your standards, sure, but that’s why you’re the head of the department and they’re your fellows.”

In a tone of great derision, “Do you know _how_ they got through five in two and a half months?”

“Knowledge?” Wilson suggested. “Experience? Trial and error?”

“If only! Tell him,” House commanded. None of his three employees came forward with the information, not even Foreman. “Whoever had the brilliant idea, tell him, and don’t try hiding behind the others because I _know_ who you are, and if you don’t step up, then me calling you an idiot every time you open your mouth will be the least of your many, many worries.”

Wilson was studying them for give-away signs, which Chase gave when he visibly blanched. Cameron whispered something to him, which Wilson imagined was something along the lines of, ‘get it over with.’ He would have given the very same advice to Chase.

Finally, Chase said, “We’ve been using Google. And searches on the medical databases and journals online the hospital is subscribed to.”

Wilson thought that there would be more, like illegally selling organs to former dictators or outsourcing their own jobs to doctors working in sweatshops. The long, indignant pause indicated otherwise. “That’s it?” He asked politely.

“That’s not it, that’s _everything_! One of the cases, they just typed the symptoms into www dot google dot com and got the solution in _seconds_!” He turned to his employees. “You’re fired. Each and every single one of you. Don’t even think about asking for letters of recommendation, I’ll just use it to write dirty limericks about what lice-picking monkeys you are.” He turned back to Wilson. “Google! Millenniums of knowledge and effort reduced to _google_! If that’s all it took, why would I be here?”

“I rather think it’s practical,” Wilson offered. “Saves time, for one. Wouldn’t the patient prefer to get the results faster?”

House narrowed his eyes at Wilson. “Do you know what technology is for? It’s for iPods and junk food and those exaggerated special effects they used in Star Wars to stick furry creatures into the background. It’s not for puzzle-solving!” House turned back again towards the door of his office. “It’s anti-learning! It’s pro-laziness! I can’t believe it! After all these years I’ve spent teaching you, this is how you pay me back! Out of my sight, all of you!”

Foreman and Cameron both opened their mouths as though to offer protests, but House must have thrown them a withering look because they quickly closed them again and joined Chase in shuffling back indoors. From what Wilson last saw of Chase’s face, he seemed to no longer be scared. And he knew why. An angry House was impressive and frightening, but to the firing thing was an empty threat, even if House didn’t realize it yet.

“Google!” House muttered, head hung, as though the ground were far better a thing to look at than this dreary world that disappointed him so. “Why not yahoo? Or askjeeves? Looking at porn would have been better!”

Wilson touched House’s arm, to better reach him through this overblown drama. “There’s nothing wrong with short-cuts—“

House shook off all Wilson contact away. “It’s not a short-cut, it’s cheating. Besides, it’s unreliable. How many patients have told _you_ what they had after five seconds on the internet? Who needs eight years of medical school and however many more of specialization when we’ve got _google_.”

His hands on his hips, Wilson said, “This isn’t about the net searches. This is about how they survived nearly three months without you, which you never thought was possible, and now you’re terrified of becoming obsolete.”

House wrinkled his face. “Rubbish.”

“After all, like you said, if the internet can do your work, why would they ever need you again? Why would Cuddy even keep you hired, if less aggravating and less malpractice-creating doctors can do what you do?”

“Of course, no internet could come up with the psychoanalytical crap you do. Instead of all that useless thinking interpretation, which, by the way, is not your specialty, couldn’t you have kept a closer eye on what was happening next door?”

“I did,” Wilson said, the very picture of calm. He hoped that his tranquility, even if false and forced, would spread itself to House. “I kept tabs on them, along with Cuddy, of their every step. They didn’t use the MRI once or ran a blood test without me knowing about it. Their average rate may be slower than yours, but then again, they didn’t kill anyone.”

“Why didn’t you know about the googling?”

“Up until now I assumed that that was the norm!”

“The norm is brain and pen! The hard way! And why is their rate slower than mine, when they’re speeding along the ‘information superhighway’?” House demanded.

“Ask them, not me. House, they’ve done good work, whether or not you’re ready to see it. Did you know that an article by Cameron is going to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine? And that she’s writing another two? And Foreman, he’s done an impressive job of keeping the group together. I don’t think they tried to kill each other once.”

Sullenly, House asked, “And Chase?”

Wilson spread his hands. “Can’t ask the world of everyone.”

House visibly perked up at the news, suddenly straightening his posture and losing the scowl. “Well,” he said, cheerfully, like he had just received a raise and a promotion, “some things don’t change.”

“You did,” Wilson said, “did you think no one else would?”

Wilson thought that he would receive a sarcastic reply to this, and for a second House looked to be ready to give one. But at the last minute he deflected the anger and instead took up haughtiness and superiority. “No one changes, Wilson. Now, excuse me, I have employees to discipline.”

 

**_if it’s a day like today, we’ll likely meet _**

When House had gone back to work, he had been looking for something familiar and comforting. His place here was established and definite. He fit in, in his own way.

Part of his lifestyle here was how Cuddy would inevitably march into his office and start complaining about whatever recent transgression he had committed. Perhaps most people would not look forward to receiving a dressing down, but it was one of the things he was most anticipating.

“House,” she said, lips pursed and hands on hips, which only emphasized her close-but-not-quite hourglass figure, “What is this about you making a fuss over using search engines?”

“Funny you bring it up, I was going to suggest to you that we get a censorship program, like China has, and ban google from the hospital.”

Cuddy looked at the monitor at his desk. “You’re on google images right now. Looking up Jennifer Aniston?”

“I’m willing to make some self-sacrifices for the greater good. And I didn’t make a fuss.”

“Oh, right,” Cuddy agreed, rolling her eyes, “my bad. Wilson called it a ‘hissy fit.’”

One of these days, House was going to have to teach Wilson that he owed loyalty to him before he did the hospital. There would always be leaks, of course, but there was no reason why Wilson couldn’t leave the blabbing to Chase, Cameron, and Foreman. Not for the first time House wondered why he trusted Wilson at all, and then he remembered that he didn’t have anyone else and that his attempts to broaden his horizons had led to nothing but annoyances, boredom, and more annoyances. “Do you _pay_ him to feed you information, or does it all slip out during pillow talk?”

“I’ll do the asking. House, how can you object to the internet?”

“It’s full of bad ideas! Have you _seen_ the porn and communist manifestos?”

“House.” Cuddy changed tone, something softer, and House knew that she was going to try to say something sensitive and warming and that, whatever it was, it was going to get on his nerves. “You’re not getting substituted. God knows I _wish_ I could trade you in for a machine, but it’s not possible, so.”

“Aye, aye, aye,” House said, with a roll of his head, “you and Wilson! It’s not about me, it’s about the fact that they couldn’t bear to _think_. I don’t have any use for such lazy idiots.”

“Even so, there will be no firing,” Cuddy said, “and if they want to? In the future? Google is open them.” With what she _thought_ was the last word, she strode towards the door.

“Hey, Cuddy,” he stopped her.

“What?”

“How’s the knocking up coming?”

Glass doors can’t be slammed shut, but Cuddy sure as hell tried her best. House was satisfied with how utterly typically the whole scene played out.

At least he could count on her to be the same.

** _you’re missing the point, you’re not my little pet _ **

After a good three hours of sitting around and doing nothing, House figured that he deserved a cup of tea. Poking around revealed that his master layout of disorganization had been overturned; he no longer knew where anything was. He could have grabbed one of the used mugs from the sink, but that implied washing and it didn’t solve the question of the missing tea bags.

“Cameron,” he said. The other two had gone off to do something, he didn’t quite know what nor did he care, “where’d you hide the tea? And the mugs?” He half-expected her to get up and get it for him, like she might once have in the good days of yore when she felt great pity for his three-legged status, but he didn’t even get so much as an answer. “You know, the things to make tea.”

When that didn’t illicit a response either, he looked over his shoulder to verify that she hadn’t disappeared. She was still there at the table. “Don’t worry,” he falsely assured her, “those were just redundant questions.”

She didn’t even look up at him.

“Ohhhh,” he said, “I see. It’s that we’re not speaking to each other. Carry on, then.”

The best way, after all, to get a case of ignoring over with is to ignore them right back.

“It was immature of you,” she said, thus proving correct House’s theory, “all that yelling. And unnecessary.”

“Thank goodness you’re above petty and childish things like yelling and ignoring, isn’t it.” House continued to rummage through the cabinets. Just because his only present employee had decided she had the right to punish him didn’t mean that he’d give up his well-earned tea.

“Not to mention _crazy_. We didn’t just rely on the results to give a definite verdict, you know, we just used them as guidelines. Half the time it only turned up trash that we shot down in minutes.”

“Not the point.”

“What is the point, then?”

“It’s not how we do things here. Remember the differential diagnosis? If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”

“It _was_ broke. We weren’t thinking of everything and online searches widened our horizons.” Cameron went over to the cabinet beneath the sink, opened it up, pulled out his red mug in a place he had checked at least five times, and shoved it at him. “The tea bags are on the top shelf, behind the napkins.”

And so they were. He waited for a moment to see if she’d heat up the water for him, but when she didn’t, he started it up himself. “Well, tough. Now that I’m here we’re doing things the right way.”

Cameron crossed her arms and glared at him. “You didn’t even want to know what we’ve been up to.”

“Didn’t really care.” Why wasn’t the water boiling yet? He was tired of this conversation. He didn’t stand lectures from Wilson and only accepted them from Cuddy because she at least got worked up into an entertaining passion, so he didn’t know why Cameron thought she could get away with it. He thought wistfully back to when she’d have more likely gone off to mope than to dig in deeper for her argument. The good old days truly had passed.

“Foreman got three hundred thousand dollars donated to this department and is about to getting another three hundred thousand dollars. Did you know that?” Cameron demanded. “No strings either.”

“No such thing as string-less donations, dear.” Finally the water boiled; House tried to pour it into his mug as quickly as possible, accidentally splashing a liberal amount on his wrist in the process.

“In this case, the strings were already cut. He just called up the wealthier patients you’ve cured and with a bit of reminding how much they owed you, they were willing to write us checks. Just like that!”

“You mean that he made them feel guilty that some _other_ guy who owed his life to me tried to kill me.” He raised his eyebrow at her and she looked away. “No one, without a fresh helping of pity and guilt, would give money away.”

“At any rate, it’s a big boost for us. And—“ she hesitated and in that moment House went back to his part of the office. Sometimes that was enough to end a conversation, sometimes it wasn’t.

This time it wasn’t. She followed him. “You really don’t care--?”

He kicked his seat so that it faced him and sat down. “Fear not, Ms. Pair of Goody Shoes, I know about your feats in the publishing world.”

She lit up with pleased surprise. “Did you—“

“Didn’t and have no plan to.”

She finally left him in peace, which is all he wanted, alone with his tea.


	4. Chapter 4

**Part VII**

** _all was right with the world_ **

Foreman came back sporting a file that, upon having its highlights read to House against his will, turned out to be interesting. The patient came in for the dry skin and stayed because of the swollen neck lymph nodes and jaundice that did not, in fact, add up to Lymphoma. It was good. House had been spending so much time working out and going for pointless flings that he forgot just how much better it was to let the thoughts in his mind run around as fast as they could, finding facts in unexpected clues.

All was right with the world.

His underlings were still, admittedly, holding a grudge against him for his less than heart-felt return, but then, when were they _not_ angry at him? It was how these things went.

House tried to focus on the patient’s concrete, undeniable physical symptoms, like the nymph nodes. He made his team run a Rubella virus antibody blood test. Cameron, though, went behind his back and chatted up the patient. Turned out he’d had all sorts of other problems over the past few months, like continuous weight gain despite fortunes on nutritionists.

“And he’s been depressed.” Cameron said, as though this would be key.

House rolled his eyes. “Along with sixteen percent of the human race. Give him a hug and wait for the test results.”

“You’re just going to ignore it?” Cameron asked.

“Weight gain and depression? The first explains the latter, or the last explains the first, either way, they don’t mean a thing. Go ask anyone on this floor and they’ll tell us that they’ve been blue in the past week and gained weight in the past month.”

“It could be important,” Foreman said.

“Yes, along with the fact that he hasn’t had sex in the past two months. Either find me relevant information or shut up.”

Crossing his arms, Foreman asked, “Wanna make a bet?”

Bets in the workplace _always_ perked House up. “You in the mood to lose money?”

“If the depression and weight gain end up being relevant, you’ll do me any one favor I ask.”

“Woah, kinky, Foreman! I like it. And if—I by ‘if’ mean ‘when’-- I’m win, you get three of my weeks in the clinic.”

“One week.”

“Two.”

Foreman nodded. “Deal.”

House added the symptoms to the board, but in smaller letters, because that’s the kind of attention they deserved.

The Rubella tests turned out negative, which meant that they were back to square one and House was racking up all the possibilities that would conveniently leave out depression. He was on the verge of rattling off another set of possible diseases when Chase said, almost innocently but the devil must have suggesting it to him, “shouldn’t we run a blood TSH?”

A test for the thyroid hormone levels. Of course.

House, at that moment, wished that he could have found an excuse, any excuse, to shoot down Chase’s idea and come up with new adjectives for his insurmountable idiocy. Instead, he had to tell him to go get the TSH test, and, of course, from there, it was only a matter of narrowing down the possibilities to Hashimoto’s Thyroidotis.

“What was that about the depression being irrelevant?” Foreman gloated.

House glowered.

 

** _turn my back for one second_ **

It’s not that he’d been wrong. And he _hadn’t_ been wrong. He’d guessed Hashimoto’s Thyroidotis before anyone else thought of it, so he’d still been right.

It was that Cameron had been the one to get the necessary information; it was that Chase had said the right thing at the right time; and it was that Foreman had won the bet.

It was, in other words, the fact that altogether they’d ganged up against him and beat him into a bloodless pulp. It was what he’d trained them to do. But now he sulked at how much they’d grown—when he wasn’t even around.

Foreman did not immediately ask for the favor. At first not having to admit to losing the bet was a relief, but House found himself growing apprehensive and then angry. When he started to write lists speculating on what the favor was, House had had enough. “If you think,” he growled to Foreman, “that I’ll ever be in the ‘right’ mood, you’re mistaken.”

“But you’ll still do it, won’t you.”

“I’m not a man of my word,” House threatened. “I am renowned for my vileness and untrustworthiness. So, no, I’ll probably laugh in your face. I won’t paint your house and I won’t have dinner with you and I won’t give you a week off from work.”

“Dinner? Seriously?” Foreman scoffed. “It is work-related, though. You can look at is as a challenge; you like those.”

“Is some relative of yours dying of an unknown disease? I can do that. You didn’t even need to blackmail me for that.”

“Not quite,” Foreman said, slowly. “I need you to write me a reference letter.”

“More grants? You’ve become quite the money-grabbing hoarder in my absence.”

“No, for a job. I’m leaving when my fellowship expires.”

He’d forgotten about the fellowships expiring. He’d half-forgotten that any of his employees would have to leave, though over the years he’d fantasized often enough about not having to see them again. But in that scenario, he was the one doing the leaving. They were the ones that stayed behind and, belatedly realizing his worth. “Think anyone would want to hire _you_?”

“A deal is a deal, House.” Foreman patted him on the shoulder, condescendingly, and House thought fleetingly of biting that hand. “It’s got to be a _good_ reference, and it’s got to be done by the end of next week.”

“Okay, yeah, but I forget.” House leaned over and, in a stage whisper, asked, “How many ‘g’s does ‘nigger’ have, or is it spelled with a ‘j’? I always forget.”

“By the end of next week, House,” Foreman said breezily.

 

** _give me a moment_ **

Wilson found House leaning over the balcony, half-empty glass in one hand and a near-empty bottle of wine on the ground. House didn’t turn around; he kept on staring out at the world before them.

Carefully, as if to not trigger a bomb, Wilson joined him at the balcony. “Bad week?”

“Don’t want to talk about it,” House muttered.

 

** _he said, “2 for 1”_ **

“Oh, Foreman, good that you’re here,” House said, looking up from the computer, “I was just writing about how much I don’t like you. It’s a list. ‘How do I hate Foreman? Let me count the ways.’”

Cameron shot a glance of concern at Foreman, but he didn’t seem to take House’s words to heart. “You can mention your jealousy at my superior skills and your resentment that I’m abandoning you.”

House peered at the blank word document on his screen, studying it with mock seriousness. “Let’s see. ‘If Foreman’s arrogance doesn’t set you running, then his incompetence will.’”

Foreman just rolled his eyes. “You can’t put it off forever, so you might as well get it over it. You’ve got a deadline, after all.” He went to the other half of the department.

Cameron, though, hung around, her hands shoved into her lab coat pockets. She seemed to hesitate but then finally asked, “Why are you being such a pain about this? It’s not as if this wasn’t going to happen.”

“Of course it was going to happen,” House said. “Just like the Roman Empire was going to fall and the pyramids are going to turn to dust.”

“You’re.. comparing Foreman to the Romans and the pyramids?”

“Only in that none of them are going to last. And so what. What a loss.” House stood up and turned off the monitor screen. “I just don’t want to write this stupid thing.”

“Let him write the reference,” Cameron suggested, “and then sign it.”

“…Did you have a personality transplant while I was gone?” House eyed her carefully.. “Was it the Manipulative Wench prototype? It’s popular these days. I hear that Cuddy had one put in years ago.”

“Hah hah. But why not? It’ll make him happy, it’ll make you happy. Everyone is happy. Where’s the wrong in that?”

“You know, it’s occurring to me that you’ve been awfully supportive of Foreman lately. Almost buddy-buddy. You’re not sleeping with him, are you?”

“What? No!” She exclaimed. “Of all ideas.”

“No? Good, then. Because then that’d be the whole department minus me, and I’d start feeling left out. But the supporting thing is still… suspect.” Cameron was going to argue against this, but House continued before she could say anything. “You’re hoping I’ll do the same for you, aren’t you. You want to write, ‘Cameron is the most beeeyoootiful girl I ever met, and her brains are even prettier!,’ and you want me to put my name on it.”

She was stunned. “How—who told you?”

“My fairy godmother. But even if she hadn’t dropped by and passed on the news, I’d have gotten four from two and two. Foreman’s isn’t the only contract about to expire.” He waited, if not anxiously, then impatiently for her reply.

“I was—I was thinking about it,” she admitted.

“And there it is! That’s two out of three. You feed ‘em, you clothe ‘em, you even learn ‘em, but when it’s all done and said, all they want is to get out of the nest at break-neck speed.”

“I hadn’t made my mind up yet,” Cameron said, taking a step towards him. “I was still thinking—if there was a reason for me to stay—“ She stepped forward again, but any further progress was blocked by the desk in between them.

He turned away. “Write whatever you want,” he said gruffly, “and I’ll sign it.”

 

**Part VIII**

** _rose-tinged _ **

House doesn’t understand; he was the one that got shot. Those bullets imbedded themselves in _him_. He was the one who had the eye-opening hallucination and got the body-restoring treatment.

Why was everyone else doing all the changing?

“It’s because they’re young,” House confided to Wilson before halving the contents of his glass. “Kids hate stability. Always looking to shake things up.”

“Last I knew, you’re a bit of a shaker, yourself,” Wilson commented. “And that the ‘kids’ wished _you’d_ be more stable.”

“Eh,” House said, “but growth and change and mutation is what they do. Until they reach a certain age like, say, ours. Then everyone plateaus and stays the same for the rest of their lives.”

“Speak for yourself,” Wilson objected.

“Oh, so, what, you’ve got plans?” House made a wide arc with his hand, suggesting big and important things. “Big career goals? Find yourself Mrs. Wilson the Fourth? Or maybe you’re going to adopt a cancerous African baby dying of tuberculosis.” Wilson didn’t reply, though he did stare into his glass contemplatively. “Not likely, right? You’re just going to stay here in small-town, frozen, constant Princeton-Plainsboro. Chasing after me, fluffing up the pillows of doomed kids, and signing your name a thousand times per day.”

Wilson nearly chugged his wine.

“Cuddy too,” House went on, introspectively, “she’s stuck too. Stuck being single and the mommy of a hospital. You see? You get to a certain age, and what you have is all that you can expect for the rest of your life.”

“You,” said Wilson, and House thought he might be starting to slur. Wilson always had been a light-weight drinker. “You sure know how to add that special rose-tinge.”

“Welcome to my world,” House said gloomily.

 

** _i’m sure that if I took even one sniff, that would bore me terrifically too_ **

Loud and up-close, the music was all for him, and he let himself loose in it. He traveled through drum beats and unpredictable trumpet improvisations, cruising along the notes and tempo. He wasn’t himself; he was just a listener. No identity, no worries.

A hand placed itself on his shoulder.

He jumped, a little, but he kept on listening, eyes closed.

The hand left his shoulder and for a moment he knew peace once more—until that same hand ripped the headphones from off his head and House was finally forced to return to the world at large.

Cuddy held the headphones. House tried to grab them back and return to his musical cocoon, but Cuddy wouldn’t comply. She sat on the couch opposite him. She was the epitome of motherliness and concern, eyes full of ‘oh, poor baby.’ House couldn’t stand the look.

“We need to talk,” she said gently.

“You can talk all you like, but don’t mind me, I’ll sit here, pretend to listen, and nod occasionally.” House pointed at the headphones. “Good old Louis was about to get into his solo, so if you don’t mind—“

“You need to start looking at applications--”

“No, I _don’t_. Chase can carry on the grunt work by himself and if he gets lonely, we’ll get him life-sized inflatable dolls. Do they sell black inflatable dolls? It’ll be just as good as the original. Maybe better.”

“And when Chase leaves?” Cuddy asked. House just snorted his disdain at the thought.

“We’re done here, aren’t we.” House managed to grab the headphones again. He put them on, settled back and closed himself off again.

 

** _the more things change_ **

After his initial bout of sullenness, House returned to his usual attitude of hostility, treating his departing employees in much the same way that he had during their past two years of work. Yet there was something colder about him, more distant.

He drove them as hard as ever in running tests and investigations, but he no longer demanded improved input from them. He took to writing the symptoms and explanations on pieces of paper instead of running the diagnosis process on the whiteboard, doing all the thinking himself. When Cameron and Foreman objected, he told them to get their own piece of paper if they wanted to do it that badly.

On their last day in the Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital, Cameron and Foreman discovered that House hadn’t come in.

There had been discussions as to whether or not Chase would be dangerously overworked on his own. And, as it turned out, he was. But House refused to hire anyone else, saying, with a streak of sarcasm that was obvious to all, that he didn’t need anyone besides his star employee Chase.

So while Chase grew progressively harried and exhausted, House slowly returned to a more acceptable state of personality as he grew accustomed to the changes in his staff.

 

** _ in a forest pitch dark, glowed the tiniest spark _ **

House had only been running a routine check. It shouldn’t have turned up anything memorable or even interesting.

It’d been nearing midnight and he was waiting for Chase to finish running the latest battery of tests-- which House fully intended to make him re-do them all over again. House needed something to pass the time and digging through database of recent consults made in the hospital seemed was better than Sunday night television.

He’d hoped to find juicy gossip, like a department head with a STD, so that he’d have something to giggle over with Wilson later.

He’d been thrilled to find Cuddy on the database. Even if it turned up nothing worse than a stuffed nose, he’d have what to tease her with. So he did a bit of investigative work to find out what she had, exactly.

What he found elicited a “Jesus Christ” out of him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part IX**

** _i didn’t know we’d come to be_ **

“Let’s hang out,” House called out of the blue. He showed up bearing a bottle of whiskey; the good stuff.

Wilson hadn’t seen him this depressed since before the Ketamine treatment, but then again, he hadn't seen too much of him at all, since then. “What’s the occasion?”

From the bathroom, where he had gone on a hunt for glasses, House replied, “Since when does getting smashed require an occasion?” He emerged from the bathroom, holding two cups stamped with the Marriott emblem.

“Doesn’t. Just thought it might.” Indeed, House never needed a reason to be depressed. Wilson accepted one of the glasses, and started to pour some for himself, and then some for House. “You being such a fan of reason and logic, after all.”

“Well, today it’s just for the hell of it.” To prove his point, House drank a good three or four gulps in one go.

Wilson discreetly put the bottle away, hoping that House might forget to serve himself more. “Then let us go to hell.”

“Amen,” and House clinked his glass against Wilson’s.

Wilson was trying to think of how to best ask, without being obvious, what had happened to him, when House asked him, “What do you want?”

“Want?”

“From life.”

Oh, so House was having an existential crisis. This Wilson could deal with. “I assume you mean without the religious themes.”

“Yeah, I can do without the Jewishims.” House got up and quickly found the bottle where Wilson had tried to hide it. Looked like they were going to get dead drunk after all.

“Just to live it the best I can, I guess.” It’d been years since Wilson had thought hard about it. His latest ruminations on the subject had been all too disheartening. “When I was younger, I wanted to help people. And that’s what I do now.”

“Kids? Wife?” House asked pointedly, staring straight into his eyes.

The questions kind of hurt. But the ache was a familiar one. “Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, does it.”

“So it’s just the two of us,” House mused. Wilson wanted to ask what he meant by that, but then House was putting his glass down. “C’mere,” he said.

“Why?”

“Just do it,” House insisted.

Wilson stoutly refused, but House yanked him by the arm, which caused the both of them to topple onto the bed into a confused heap. Wilson’s glass flew to the side and he heard it break.

Wilson’s head was hanging off the side and the only thing keeping him from sliding off, in an ungraceful bodily landslide, was House’s weight over his torso and legs. “Ouch.”

“Yeah,” House agreed.

When it became apparent that House wasn’t going to move anytime soon, Wilson said pointedly, “All the blood is draining to my head.” House leaned over to one side and Wilson started to scoot away, but then, unexpectedly, House’s weight was on him again, pinning him down.

He was face to face with House and suddenly felt distinctly uncomfortable. “Um,” he said. His eyes darted back and forth, not quite sure where to look, whether at forehead or at nose bridge or left eye. He wasn’t used to this kind of proximity with House. “Are you going to move?”

“Wanted to watch you squirm,” House said cheerfully.

Without knowing why, Wilson flushed. “What if I don’t want to squirm?”

House smiled and Wilson knew that he shouldn’t have challenged him. “Then I’ll have to make you, won’t I.”

Wilson felt something on his chest and, upon looking down, saw that House was, one by one, unbuttoning his shirt. “You’re unbuttoning my shirt,” he said, with a sort of far-away, detached curiosity. Somewhere along the way things had stopped making sense.

“Am I?” House asked, but Wilson thought he should know whether or not he was, especially if he was down to two buttons—now one, now none. He patted Wilson’s navel when he finished. “I’m not unbuttoning anything.”

“Not now—“ Wilson defended. “Just because you stopped doesn’t mean—“ but there was a whole new issue to deal with, and Wilson tried to think of how to say ‘you’re touching my chest’ without sounding like it was gay or seductive or something. He settled lamely with, “You’re touching my chest.” His thoughts were getting muddled.

“That _is_ true,” House agreed and kept on touching. To be talking about it made it all seem even less real.

The lick—deliberate and slow—behind his ear made reality come roaring back, though. “House!” Wilson exclaimed, holding a hand up to the afflicted area, “what are you _doing_?”

He looked kind of pleased, like he was happy to finally be caught. “Ticklish?”

“No, and not the point!” Wilson pushed him so that he could sit up. Now that House was no longer on him, his thoughts were suddenly a whole lot clearer. He started to button up his shirt.

“Wilson—“ House pressed a hand against Wilson’s, stopping them. “Don’t.”

Wilson _had_ to stare. “Don’t what?”

Abashed was a new and fascinating look for House. “Don’t you—don’t you think it might be kind of fun. We could try.”

At first Wilson didn’t get it. And then he saw the hope in House’s expression. House needed him.

Wilson liked the sound of that. House. Needing him-- in whatever sense of the word.

Tentatively, he touched House’s face. If being close-up had been disconcerting, this was more intimate still. But this time, knowing that it wasn’t a prank of some sort, Wilson wanted that intimacy.

“I’m not here for all-night foreplay,” House growled, and that put Wilson at ease. This was a House that was deeply familiar to him, even if the terrain was new. And with that ease, he leaned over for an open-mouthed kiss.

“You were supposed to be harder to convince,” House commented.

“Don’t complain.”

 

** _c'est la seule fantaisie ici pour toujours_ **

The next morning, Wilson’s first thought was:_I had sex with House. That’s it, it’s over._

As he brushed his teeth, as he showered, as he dried his hair, that’s all he could think about, heart heavy. He kept thinking, _I should wear my new blue tie and I had sex with House, or, don’t know if I have enough time for coffee at the hotel buffet and I had sex with House_.

Of course, given that House himself was still sleeping in the bed, blissfully deaf to Wilson’s thoughts, perhaps Wilson could be forgiven for his fixation.

Wilson was starting to feel pretty miserable when House made rustling, wake-up noises. “Hmerkjk,” he eloquently said.

Wilson had decided he’d best be casual. “I was wondering if you’d ever wake up,” he said lightly, like it wasn’t the Morning After.

“Wilson? Izzat you?”

“Who else would it be?” For a second Wilson hoped that, by some fluke of divine intervention, House had forgotten the previous night. But that probably wouldn’t be the case.

House motioned at him with his hand. “C’mere.”

Warily, Wilson did. “What—“

His breath was stale, which was unfair because Wilson had _just_ brushed his teeth, and his stubble was even rougher than the night before, and Wilson was sure that this angle would get him a crick in the neck if he stayed in it for too long. And too long he stayed; the price was worth it.

When they parted, House grinned at him. “Just wanted to say good morning.”

Wilson, dazed and walking somewhere along cloud nine, nodded. Then he remembered the whole casual thing. “Good morning,” he repeated, in as normal a voice he could manage. Maybe House would be too sleepy to notice how not normal it was.

“Now get out of the way, I’ve got to piss.”

As House went about his own morning routine, Wilson’s thoughts were the same as before, but now they were of a different tone. The depression was gone. In its place was an overwhelming joy. I’ll wear my favorite brown suit and I had sex with House, he thought, all the while grinning like a maniac.

 

**Part X**

** _the neighbors complain about the noises above_ **

Try as he might, Wilson could not wipe off the smile. It lasted him the whole day, through staff meetings and conversations about the weather. It was wildly inappropriate, and he had to use all of his will to banish it away during his patient consults.

He was still nursing the emotional high when Cuddy walked into his office. “Wow, they weren’t kidding!” She exclaimed, a smile of her own on her face.

“Kidding about what?” Again, he tried to train his grin downwards, to no avail.

“Half the hospital is abuzz with how you can’t stop smiling. They said you looked _happy_. I didn’t think it was possible, but I had to see for myself.”

“Doesn’t the hospital have anything better to do?” He complained, but it came out good-natured. Everything he said today came out that way. He could have cursed someone to burn in hell and it’d come out friendly. “Anyway, me being happy isn’t _that_ strange.”

“Oh, yes it is.” She leaned against the wall, arms crossed, and winked conspiratorially at him. “So. Who is it?”

“Who?” He repeated blankly. Was it that obvious?

“Oh, come on. You’re head over heels, I can tell. So, who is it? Anyone I know?”

He shuffled some papers on his desk in a hopeful, yet inutile, attempt to appear half-distracted. “I don’t think so.”

Cuddy eyed him. “Yeah, right. I think I must know her very, very well. Which means she works here?”

“Whatever happened to a man’s right to privacy?” Wilson complained.

“If it’s in hospital domain, then it’s my _job_ to know what’s going on. And you don’t want me to know, so it must be someone—“ she suddenly took on an annoyed expression. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” he said weakly, but he knew that Cuddy had figured it out.

“Wilson! You should know better!”

“He came onto _me_! How is this my fault?”

“I count on you to keep him in check! That is not keeping him in check! Now that you’ve rolled over—“

“_Hey_\--“

“Who knows what he’ll feel is his right to do? If he’ll ever listen to you again?”

“It’s just sex, Cuddy.” He never did appreciate discussing the intimate details of his life. It was offensive, like swear words written on public property. He liked it even less how Cuddy was echoing his own fears. The happiness that had been keeping him afloat all day started to fade and in its place he found that his morning’s pessimism remained. “Hardly a world-changing event.”

“This hospital _is_ my world and I’ll do everything I can to keep it running. Part of my plan includes keeping House, and most of my plan for _that_ is you helping him maintain some semblance of balance.” She rubbed her temples. “I need you, Wilson. I can’t handle him on my own, and pretty soon I’m going to have even more on my hands.”

He knew as much. It’d been their understanding for as long as he could remember working here. He looked away. “What’s done is done.”

“Don’t I know it.” She sighed. “What are you going to do?”

What _was_ he going to do? He’d spent the whole day uplifted by that morning kiss, like it was some indication that the one-time fling wasn’t a one-time fling. But even if it weren’t, what of it? He didn’t think it was a good idea to continue. It was, like he had said, just sex, but Cuddy was right in that it wasn’t so straightforward. “I wish I knew.”

“How about you not encourage it?”

Wilson would do everything to discourage House. But if House offered, he did not think he could resist. House’s touch was too warm, too easy to accept. It was like walking into an air-conditioned room on the hottest day of summer; like eating after a day of fasting. He’d been longing for this. He’d been longing for longer than he’d realized.

If House never brought up the subject again, that would be one thing. Wilson would follow his example and it’d be catalogued in their large library of unmentionable incidents. That, however, was unlikely. House was addicted to fast, guaranteed pleasures. He knew that the next time House wanted a quick rush, something easy to get him off his depression, that he would likely turn to Wilson again. “I’ll do what I can.”

 

** _something’s gotta give _ **

“I heard,” Cuddy said, one eyebrow arching upwards suggestively.

“Back at you,” House replied brusquely.

Cuddy instinctively placed a hand over her stomach, which would have given her away at once even if House had only been shooting the breeze. “You know what? I’m not even going to bother being surprised. How did you found out?”

“Can’t reveal my sources. And you?”

“Straight from the horse’s mouth.”

“Wilson always was crap at keeping secrets.”

“Yeah.” They eyed each other warily and they lapsed into silence.

House cleared his throat, waving at her midsection. “So you got what you wanted.”

“Hardly a ‘what,’” Cuddy said wryly.

“Who you wanted, then. Though I don’t think we get to chose who. …Though you’d have to. Who _did_ you choose?”

Cuddy sighed and, digging through the contents of a normally locked drawer, pulled out a thin folder. “Here. Go to town. I know that you won’t give me peace otherwise. See if you can keep your mouth shut for once, at least until I can make a proper announcement.”

But House balked at taking the folder. “Too scared to look? Or too jealous?” she asked.

“What are your plans?” He asked suddenly, taking the folder.

She looked down at herself, then back at him. “Have a baby in eight months and raise it. Thought that that was pretty obvious.”

“I mean—are you going to keep working?”

She softened a little. “Of course.”

“Because—“ House scratched the back of his neck. “Raising a kid and running a hospital, those are two full-time jobs, and math wasn’t my strongest subject, but two full-times for one person isn’t possible.”

“I am going to have to cut back,” she admitted. “For a few years, at least.”

“Of course. Gotta prioritize.” House looked away. “Babies come first.”

“House—“ she said. She tried to think of how she wouldn’t just vanish now that she was going to be a mother; that they didn’t have to put an end to whatever it was that they had. She had no idea how having a child would change her life.

He threw back the folder back onto her desk. With a deeper voice than usual, “Turns out I’m not so curious, after all.”

 

**_making me ashamed to feel the way that I do _**

Screw Cuddy. But she was officially off the screw-list, wasn't she.

House went straight to Wilson's office and had barely made a sexual insinuation before Wilson was up against him, removing clothes and sucking face. They kissed sloppily, like two college students scared they wouldn’t make it to second base.

Stuff was shoved aside and with one leg wrapped around House and the other planted somewhat firmly on the floor, Wilson was thoroughly fucked against his desk. “Are you always this much of a slut?” House asked around a shortage of breath and bites along Wilson’s throat.

“Yes,” Wilson gasped, though maybe that wasn’t an answer but a vocalization of approval, because it was soon followed by an “Oh, god,” as his head leaned back, giving House more biting access to his jaw.

If it had been an answer, House thought it was one big, fat, lie. It wasn’t just attraction on Wilson’s part that made him give in so easily and House knew it, though he avoided thinking about it because he didn’t feel the same way. Sex with Wilson was startlingly enjoyable, but that’s all it was, enjoyable. Little more.

Afterwards, when House was wiping off ejaculation from off his chest with a Kleenex, Wilson, pulling back on his slacks, asked with carefully feigned casualness hat he was going to do that night. “Why?” House asked.

“Just curious.” Wilson said, looking down at his shirt as he buttoned it up again. “I think they call it small talk. Or chit-chat. I always get the two mixed up.”

Chit-chat House’s ass. But he had to give Wilson credit for at least pretending that he wasn’t indirectly trying to see if he’d spend the night with him. His conscious suggested that he shouldn’t lead Wilson on, but the rest of him liked the idea of more sex. “I’ll do my Rocky-training imitation. Maybe later I’ll hit your place.”

“Oh,” Wilson said, almost as if he didn’t care, “If you want.”

Wilson could try to hide the extent of his feelings all he liked. Faking didn’t make it any less of a lie, but it was a palliative to the truth.

It wasn’t until that night that the guilt finally hit House.

It made him feel like shit.

And whenever he felt like shit, he wanted an instant cure. He had neither the Vicodin nor the pain to numb himself to the world, so instead, he leaned over and kissed Wilson, insistently.

Wilson woke up and muttered a guttural, sleep-addled, “wha—“ but within seconds he was kissing back, hands already groping House’s shoulders.

“I need you,” House whispered. He didn’t know in what kind of way he meant it-- he only knew that it was true. “I need you.”

Wilson moaned at this statement and again House felt like shit for using him like this. But he pushed Wilson down anyway, down untill Wilson's mouth was on his dick, and House subtmitted himself to physical stimulation. For a brief, thankful respite, he wasn't thinking. There was no guilt nor anger; just pleasure.

 

**Part XI**

** _misdirection_ **

Wilson, and everyone else in the hospital, heard them from a floor away. He recognized their voices and hoped, a bit futilely, that it wasn’t who he thought it was. But, of course, upon reaching the reception at the main entrance, there they were, Cuddy and House, arguing, from what it sounded like, miconazole.

Groups of people huddled around the room, too scared and too fascinated to do anything but watch. Wilson walked passed them and straight to the fighting couple. They were so worked up that they didn’t even notice his presence, not until he stepped in between them. “I don’t know if that’s the best use of your vocal chords,” he said, looking from one to the other. Cuddy suddenly looked embarrassed, as if she couldn’t believe she’d let herself get this far. House looked no less pissed than before. “Is this about some new patient for the Diagnostics Department?”

“No, clinic,” Cuddy said under her breath.

“Clinic?” Wilson echoed. That’s when he noticed a male adolescent, sort of jock-looking, in the clinic area, who looked to be on the verge of dying of embarrassment. “What’s the problem?”

“A garden variety of athlete’s foot.” House snapped. “Will your Royal Highness let me go now, or do you still feel the need to impose your regal point of view over my mine?”

“Just go, House,” Cuddy muttered, and with a grunt of something like annoyance, he did.

“What was _that_ about?” Wilson asked, “Not just athlete’s foot, I bet.” When he saw that Cuddy was hesitating, “If you want me to keep him in check, you’ve got to let me know what’s going on in that Sphinx brain of his.”

Cuddy sighed. “Well…”

 

** _i can't be owned by no one _ **

Ever since his very public fight with Cuddy, House had had an increasingly bad feeling settling in the pool of his stomach.

His fears were confirmed by seeing that the lights were already on in his apartment. He didn’t think his place was being ransacked by burglars, though he would have preferred that over the more likely alternative: Wilson.

He found Wilson sitting by a window, arms crossed and leaning on the sill. Keeping him company was a glass of amber liquid. A quick glance at the floor revealed a bottle of whiskey.

Wilson didn’t even look away from the window when House came in. “Hey,” House started, hoping to steer whatever conversation they were about to have to a lighter mood, “the boozing is _my_ gimmick.”

As it turned out, Wilson wasn’t having any of House’s self-defensive humor. He didn’t smile, smirk, chuckle, or show any other of his usual signs of appreciation. He just turned around, still seated, and asked, with an atypical heaviness, “How long?”

“How long what? How long is a piece of thread? However long as you want it to be, the last time I measured.” House could barely believe the lameness of his joke. But anything was better than what was coming.

“How long have you known about Cuddy’s pregnancy?”

There it was: Wilson’s infamous gift for directness. “I’m going to need some of that,” he said, indicating the drink. He might need _all_ of that.

“First you tell me how long.”

But there was no answer House could give him that would sidestep the worst of the truth and not be an absolute lie. He didn’t want to admit to it-- not because it would hurt Wilson but because he didn’t want to confess to yet another selfish act.

The silence ended up being just as damning. “Figures,” Wilson said, calmly, and knocked back the remainder of his glass’ contents. “I knew that there had to be some ulterior motive for sleeping with me.”

House found himself a glass, since it seemed that Wilson in no mood to lift so much as a finger to help him. He asked, pouring himself a few inches of guaranteed numbness, “What would you have preferred? That the Yankees lost? That I’m depressed? How about a mid-life crisis, would that make you feel better? Because they’re all true. Take your pick.”

“Whatever happened to jogging, work, the fact that you’re no longer in _pain_, wouldn’t _those_ have been better outlets--“ But Wilson’s rant died halfway through and he shook his head, slowly. “I guess it doesn’t make a difference.”

Wilson seemed so relaxed over this. Hurt, obviously, but it was as if he’d long since resigned to the fact that his only friend was an asshole who took advantage of a decade-long crush to get easy highs. That Wilson seemed to have half-expected it irritated House, and he latched onto that. He’d take anger over guilt any day. “What now?” The alcohol he’d downed made him indestructible. “You going to leave me, like the rest of them? Find something better, a needier set of cancer patients on the other side of the continent?”

“Why would I go anywhere?”

His naivety, for some reason, only made House’s temper rise even higher. “You want to stick around, then, for the abuse, and see how much lower I can go.”

“It’s not as if I don’t already know.” It occurred to House that Wilson’s heart was breaking and that he was doing his best to hide it. Well, if Wilson didn’t want to let on, House wouldn’t go there either. He’d act none the wiser. “What about you? You wanna go somewhere, try out some new easy solution to your problems?”

“Go where?” House asked bitterly. “It’s all the same. Hell, _I’ll_ be the same. No matter what I do or how I change, I’m still me.” The words just flew out of his mouth and he immediately regretted them. He shouldn’t have drunk after all, not if it was going to loosen his tongue like that.

“What’s so bad about you?”

House couldn’t believe his ears. “You got yourself dead drunk because I used you and you _still_ ask that?”

“Point,” Wilson conceded. “The question’s still valid, though. What’s so bad about you? So you’re blunt and cruel and don’t give a flying rat’s ass about anyone, but really, what’s so bad about any of that.”

“Don’t flatter me _too_ much.”

“If you’re disappointed in yourself, welcome to the club.” Wilson raised his glass in a sort of toast. “Suck it up. You can do as many crazy, radical things as you like—chemical make-overs, speed dating, treating anyone who likes you like crap—but you’re always going to be unsatisfied. Get used to it.”

What House hated most about listening to Wilson was that he was generally right. Even when he was drunk and heartbroken, he was still right. “God,” House muttered, “I’m right back where I started, aren’t I. Right back at square one.”

Wilson cleared his throat. “Not exactly square one, no.”

“Sleeping with you doesn’t count.”

“Oh. Well, if it’s any comfort—“ It struck House as insane that Wilson would try to find comfort him, but then again, it was so very like him “--you’re not the only one who’s incapable of changing their lives anytime soon. There’s me, and hey, there’s always Chase. I can’t see him ever changing.”

“There’s always Chase,” House agreed.

Wilson passed out not much later. House considered dragging him to his bed, but in the end he decided not to; it would cause more complications than it was worth. And, anyway, he wasn’t magnanimous enough to put in that kind of effort. So instead he just arranged Wilson in such a way that he wouldn’t choke to death on his own vomit, went to bed, and fell into a deep, alcohol-induced slumber.

Nothing was solved, but at least everything was the same as it ever was, even if it wasn’t. And though House wasn’t particularly inspired by his life, he knew that it was at least acceptable.

 

**Epilogue**

** _the final word_ **

“Chase!” House exclaimed, only mildly hyper from four cups of coffee and a bag of mini-sized Snickers he had consumed in one sitting; they were going on hour thirty-two of marathon diagnosing. “What goodies did the MRI scan bring us?”

Wordlessly and seemingly on the verge of collapse, Chase handed him a manila envelope. House peered at it warily. “Something tells me that that does _not_ contain the answer to our mystery du jour.”

“It’s my letter of resignation,” Chase said, rubbing at the corner of his eyes. “Ever since Foreman and Cameron—_they’re_ living normal lives and that sounds pretty good right now.” For a split-second House just stared at him; he was then overtaken by the urge laugh, and he did so. “Didn’t realize that my leaving would be so funny,” Chase muttered.

“Not everything is about you,” House got out as he regained control. “But you did get the MRI scans, didn’t you?”

“…That’s it?” He asked, incredulous. “No questions, no surprise, no nothing?”

“At the moment, I couldn’t care less. If you’re going, you’re going, taa-taa.” With that, House turned to leave his office.

“Where are _you_ going?” Chase asked.

“Since it seems like you spent the last hour writing that letter hour instead of doing your job, I’m off to do it myself. Let Cuddy—whoops, forgot, she’s busy at home letting a little one suck off her tits—let that gal who replaced her, whatever her name is—know about your change in plans, she’ll take care of the paperwork. I can’t be bothered.”

On the way to his patient’s room, House pulled out his cell phone and called Wilson. “Guess what."


End file.
